78.57 square metres of what?

General
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We’re doing a little trials muck around/demo at the Woodford Folk Festival at the end of the year and I’ve been thinking about what to use. So far I’ve come up with lots of sandwich boards, a launch ramp, planks of varying skinniness, and different boxes to hop on and gap between. The thing is it needs to be easily transportable. Are there any other common trials things that I’ve missed that will be appropriate? I was also thinking of a metal ladded of sorts (made for the purpose of trials) that is solid and not too heavy. That way you could hop either between or on top of the round (and small) metal rungs.

Any suggestions?

Andrew

diagram - sandwich board series.jpg

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I’ve thought of a few little combinations of things that gnereally wouldn’t be too hard to transport. I’ll attach a diagram of the basic layout I was thinking of.

My only real concern now is those big boxes. What can we make them out of? They need to be light yet as solid and stable as possible and preferably at least partially collapsable. Am I just dreaming here or does such a think exist?

Thanks,
Andrew

diagram - full setup.jpg

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I’m thinking of doing very similiar stuff, so please keep posting your ideas and diagrams, and I’ll do the same.

Box Material: I’m thinking 3/4" plywood would be adequate (at least for smaller boxes). Comments anyone? (I happened to recently raid some construction site dumpsters and found 1" plywood - I’m sure it’ll be strong enough).

Box Portability, idea 1: make different boxes different sizes such that they can nest inside of one another for transport.

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Box Portability, idea 2: use hinges on vertical box corners, and make the top removable. Note: To collapse completely as shown in the diagrams, at least one pair of diagonally opposite hinges must be offset vertically (otherwise they will get in each others way while collapsed). The top of the box is not in the diagrams, only the sides.

top = top view of setup box

right=box collapsed (flatter and longer)

bottom=box collaped (shorter but less flat). One pair of opposite hinges have the pins removed to collapse in two pieces like this

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Very nice. How did you come to the shorter folded up position? I think I’d have trouble trusting the strength of the middle of the top part of that box. Any ideas for supporting it when it’s being jumped around on? Have you got some sort of performance coming up soon?

That’s pretty much all I’ve been able ot come up with for portable trials stuff so far.

I’d like to include some posts for hopping on and gapping between but I can’t think how to keep them stable. I did have one idea but it’s a bit abstract. You could have cylindrical wooden posts with three or four hinged bits. The hinged bits could have spikes on the ends that dig into the ground (it would only work for grass and maybe dirt) and keep it stable. If it worked it would definately be portable.

Andrew

post.jpg

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with that post idea, you may want to consider how close together the strings at the top would be. You would be able to hop from the ground. but I think, (for the most part) you would snag your wheel at the top of the jump, smashing your gut into that post.

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andrew_carter> How did you come to the shorter folded up position?

By pulling the hinge pins out on two opposite corners. You then have two sets of folded pairs of sides. (in the diagram note the black vs hollow hinge pivots)

> I think I’d have trouble trusting the strength of the middle of the top part of that box. Any ideas for supporting it when it’s being jumped around on?

Good point, particularly if for larger boxes (say greater than 2? feet on a side) and/or if the user is going to be doing high hops while on top. The top could be cross brace, or one could use thicker plywood or multiple layers of plywood, or internal ‘X’ cross braces could be used. Internal ‘X’ braces could be made collapsable by slotting each of two pieces in the center so they fit together standing on edge in an X (like water bed supports are (or were)).

> Have you got some sort of performance coming up soon?
Nope. Just for fun. Might use them at the Austin JuggleFest come February.

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It might make it a bit more difficult, but looking at the first picture the boxes don’t really need to be boxes. You only really need a top.

How about making a table instead, a flat piece of wood with X reinforcement for the top. Then four legs.

You could make the four legs splay out slightly away from the corners of the square top, which would give you stability and have crosses of strong wire making an X between each pair of legs to stop them being pulled out too much. If they’re bolted on to the top then you could fully dismantle it down to the top piece plus legs & wires.

Joe

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Sofa,
Those are meant to be bits of wood, not strings. That way, they would hopefully make it more stable by opposing the ‘push’ not the ‘pull’. I don’t know if that makes any sense but it seems like it would be stronger…unless you had heaps of strings.

Duaner,
That makes sense. I just didn’t realise you could pull the pins out of hinges. X bracing seems like the way to go. Do you think the actual braces would have to be resting on the upright walls of the box? That might actually help to keep things stable as well as solid. You could cut grooves in the bracing where it sits on the upright parts so it wouldn’t slide around when gapping onto and from it.

Joe,
That sounds like a really good idea. Just to make sure, would it look something like in this diagram? Do the wires connect at the top to the horizontal board or to tops of the supporting legs? How would you fasten the wire?

Thanks,
Andrew

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Why has this never been done?

I thought of something last night…why not use a mini trampoline in trials demos? It’d be great fun! I drew a diagram of a minitramp. next to a 2m high platform. :wink:

Andrew

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…and here it is (sorry).

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Sounds like the minitramp woudl be fun…BUT you may want to test it first the tire could do one of three things, first it could work fine and be heeps of fun! Second it could bottom out the mini-tramp, or third and worst it could rip a big far hole in the matereal. If it works fine then it would be super fun…tell us how u get on :wink:

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Re: 78.57 square metres of what?

Those are pretty cool diagrams. Maybe a couple of suggestions might be helpful:

Re sandwich boards:

Sandwich boards are great- you could do a complete demo with nothing else I think. 5/8" or ideally 3/4" thick plywood is best for making them.

Sandwich boards look a more attractive and are stronger if you put the 2x4s on the inside rather than the outside, and then attach the hinge to the 2x4’s. This also seems to be a bit more durable for moves like pedal grabs onto the end of a sandwich boards.

It’s really, really important that sandwich boards be significantly wider than they are tall, and be hinged quite wide open, or they can be pretty lethal for tipping over. I’d say half again as wide as they are tall, at least, and maybe at least 35 degrees open.

For the highest ones (ie higher than say 3 feet) it’s best if the top edge of the board is narrower than the bottom, making a more stable pyramid shape.

It’s good idea to hollow out the middle part of the edge that touches the ground, because this makes them much more stable on grass.

Rails:

You should be able to make rails that nest in the groove on sandwich boards, either round poles or square rails. This is convenient and easily transportable, and can be quite stable. This is a great place to put round rails if you want them.

Vertical poles:

At the last UNICON we made a platform for a vertical pole by making a pyramid-shaped box, with a wide 30"x30" bottom and a flat 10"x10" top. In the top we cut an 8" diameter hole and stuck an 8" wide round wooden pole down inside. The pole was secured at the bottom by two boards that attached to either side of the inside of the pyramid box.

One other major factor is that the pole has to extend sufficiently far above the highest support that the supports will not interfere with the bottom of the tire when doing pedal grabs.

Drop transitions:

It’s really nice to have a strong, curved transition for drops, shaped like the kicker that trials bikers would use to get onto something. This really saves impact force on your cranks. In the Norco demos I usually drop off an 8’ high trailer onto a 2’ transition, and it’s less force on the body than droping 3’ to flat ground.

Other comments:

Smooth surfaces on boxes and ladders are usually much better than any kind of ladder bridge setup, because the crowd can’t tell why a rough surface is harder, and it just makes things look more awkward.

Parallel beams set up between two 4’x4’x24" boxes work well for lots of different tricks. Make the top of the beams flush with the boxes so that there is no little bump to trip you up when gliding or wheel walking along the beam.

It’s better to make lots of independent, mobile structures than to think in terms of making longer lines that can only be set up in a couple of different ways.

If you don’t want the complexity of collapsible boxes, make boxes that can nest inside each other to save space.

Kris.

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In the old Norco Trials Team setup, we had one larger box that could be dismantled. Basically we made it like all the other boxes, that is with plywood and 2x2’s along the edge of each plywood such that they could be put together. However, instead of screwing the plywood together we used bolts and T-nuts (nuts that can be hammered into a hole, to form a tapped hole you can screw bolts into). This was simple and worked well. We also put a door in the side of it so that we could store our stuff inside during demos.

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Wow, what a great brain dump! Thanks Kris.

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Kris,

Thanks a lot for all your words of wisdom. I’ll definately have to try out a lot of those ideas. Sorry about all the questions…don’t spend too long answering them.

Sandwich boards are great- you could do a complete demo with nothing else I think.
Could you please briefly suggest any applications of sandwich boards other than those you mentioned?

Sandwich boards look a more attractive and are stronger if you put the 2x4s on the inside rather than the outside, and then attach the hinge to the 2x4’s. This also seems to be a bit more durable for moves like pedal grabs onto the end of a sandwich boards.
Thanks. Do you reckon it would also appear more difficult and therefore be more entertaining this way? It’d probably be more stable too. I can’t pedal grab yet…would you suggest sandwich boards as a good thing to practise on?

It’s really, really important that sandwich boards be significantly wider than they are tall, and be hinged quite wide open, or they can be pretty lethal for tipping over.
I just looked back at the ones you guys used at Unicon and noticed the planks extending out at the base of the taller ones. Were they fastened to the ground at all?

You should be able to make rails that nest in the groove on sandwich boards, either round poles or square rails. This is convenient and easily transportable, and can be quite stable. This is a great place to put round rails if you want them.
Great idea. Have you tried this out? If so, did you have any problems with the round rail twisting around in the groove?

At the last UNICON we made a platform for a vertical pole by making a pyramid-shaped box…
That sounds really handy and something I’ll at least want to try at home for my own use (we can’t take too much stuff to Woodford because we need to transport it and assemble it easily). You don’t have any photos of these obstacles do you? I get the general idea but I’d like to see the proportions and heights and that sort of thing.

It’s really nice to have a strong, curved transition for drops…
What sort of angle would you recommend?

In the Norco demos I usually drop off an 8’ high trailer onto a 2’ transition, and it’s less force on the body than droping 3’ to flat ground.
Seriously? That’s amazing!

Thanks again,
Andrew

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Wayne and I did some building today and had a great time. We got a sandwich board (the little one under the ramp) made, finished off the stair set, and attached the ramp to the box. It’s hinged and we bolted it on so we can remove it easily…it’s really nice. Wayne also has a set of three pretty steep steps sitting at home so we can do lots of stuff with those. We’ll make about 5 sandwich boards and I really want to try some of the other stuff Kris mentioned. Plus we’ll hopefully have a higher box and some other bits and pieces like the ladder in that second diagram. The Woodford Folk Festival is going to be so much fun and we should have a really good playground set up that’ll accomodate for a variety of riders. We’re going to soon set up a Queensland unicycle club and we’ll keep all this stuff for future performances. The only problem is that the Woodford Folk Festival is in 91 days. :angry:

Andrew

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Here’s what we built…

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Hope this helps:

Q: Could you please briefly suggest any applications of sandwich boards other than those you mentioned?
Q: Do you reckon it would also appear more difficult and therefore be more entertaining this way? It’d probably be more stable too. I can’t pedal grab yet…would you suggest sandwich boards as a good thing to practise on?

Sandwich boards are one of the best and most versatile pieces of practice structure you can possibly build, because they force you to be a precise trials rider, which in my opinion is way more important than being able to do big moves. You can line them up end-to-end for some good balance lines, or side to side for gapping or any combination of both.

The V-shaped groove makes them a bit weird to ride along at first if you line up several end-to-end, but it’s also a good shape if you want to practice accurate drops down onto a narrow balance lines- the groove catches the tire well and you’re less likely to pop off than a square or rounded line.

Also like I said before you can use two of them for supports for a pole secured between them to create a longer round balance line.

In demos they’re great for linking lines between larger boxes too- crowds always like to see you line up different objectives and it’s easy to mix things up by keeping the bigger structures in place throughout a demo, and dragging sandwich boards around to create different line combinations.

Sandwich boards aren’t as good as standard box structures for learning pedal grabs, but they are a good place to practice more advanced, such as grabs onto the side (for grabs onto off-angle surfaces), or onto the end, where you might have to turn 90 degrees after the grab to ride along it, or go to rubber and then complete a forwards gap to a second sandwich board.

However, it’s CRITICAL that you make the sandwich boards long enough so that they are stable end-to-end for doing things like this (hollowing out the middle of the bottom edge also helps a lot). Ideally, two sandwich boards lined up end-to-end should represent one complete pedal revolution (of a 19" trials uni). This makes it easier to line up your pedals for hops if you land, roll the length of two sandwich boards, and want to hop somewhere else.

Having the 2x4’s on the inside makes the sandwich boards look harder and also they’re a little more comfortable to fall onto for some reason (not that comfortable!).

Q:I just looked back at the ones you guys used at Unicon and noticed the planks extending out at the base of the taller ones. Were they fastened to the ground at all?

This was only done because a few sandwich boards constructed for UNICON were not made wide enough, and this was done to fix this. It shouldn’t be necessary if your sandwich boards are well designed.

You should be able to make rails that nest in the groove on sandwich boards, either round poles or square rails. This is convenient and easily transportable, and can be quite stable. This is a great place to put round rails if you want them.
Q: Great idea. Have you tried this out? If so, did you have any problems with the round rail twisting around in the groove?

I’ve done this where we drilled holes in the ends of the pipes, and then ran a bolt through the pipe and corresponding holes in the sandwich boards. This worked pretty well.

You don’t have any photos of these obstacles do you? I get the general idea but I’d like to see the proportions and heights and that sort of thing.

No sorry I don’t- not too many. However, www.alwaysmad.com has a quicktime video of a trials demo and interview at a consumer tradeshow earlier this year, with myself and Ryan Leech. There’s also an example (hard to see) of dropping from a 6 foot high box onto a 2 foot high sandwich board, oriented lengthwise, and some stuff on a round balance beam.

Demo is at:


Interview is at:

You’ll see some basic stuff in the background, this wasn’t our usual setup.

It’s really nice to have a strong, curved transition for drops. Q. What sort of angle would you recommend?..

Curved, not flat, from 45 degrees to gentle over a couple of feet. This depends on the drop height though- a big one like this would be for very large drops. Anything with a bit of angle would be OK. Curved works best but flat is OK, but sure it’s strong enough.

Kris.

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Definately…thanks a lot.